Social isolation as a punishment procedure: a controlled study

Contingent social isolation was investigated as a punishment procedure for the disruptive behavior of emotionally disturbed children in a classroom setting. The methodological limitations of previous studies were outlined, and alternatives adopted. Within a reversal and multiple baseline design, contingent social isolation was found to be an effective and relatively specific punisher. By introducing a new observation procedure, “pseudo-timeout”, it was determined that the punishing effect of social isolation was not attributable to observation artifact. A means for resolving the terminological confusion in the present use of timeout and social isolation was recommended.     

Delay of gratification in children: The effects of training under fixed,decreasing and increasing delay of reward

The effect of fixed, gradually decreasing, or increasing delay of reward in discimination learning on later delay of gratification was investigated. In discrimination training, employing a correction procedure, a candy reward was delivered either after 0, 10, 20, 40 or 60 sec fixed delay; or after 60 sec in the first block of trials and decreased in successive block; or reward was immediate in the first block of trials and delay was gradually increased to 60 sec. In the delay of gratification tests, subjects could press a button immediately to receive a small reward (one candy or a cheap toy) or delay pressing and receive an increasingly larger reward (more candy or a better toy).Learning was not significantly affected by either fixed or decreasing delays. Increasing delays resulted in faster learning than decreasing delays. The increasing delay group demonstrated superior delay of gratification on both tests. Fixed delay groups did not differ significantly among themselves, nor from the decreasing delay group. The effectiveness of exposure to increasing delays in facilitating delay of gratification was interpreted as due to either the acquisition of coping responses or the extinction of frustration.     

Longitudinal neuropsychological report of aphasia following left-subcortical hemorrhage

The neuropsychological assessments of a patient with language disturbance following left thalamic-putaminal hemorrhage over a $\text{2}\text{1}\text{2}\text{-}\text{year}$ period are presented together with premorbid measures of performance. Findings indicate that behavioral deficits which are both linguistic and nonlinguistic in nature differ from cortical aphasic syndromes in symptomatology and recovery course. The deficit pattern is also unlike that in other reported cases of left-subcortical lesions. Persistent dysarthria with fluent speech, limitation of verbal span and repetition, agraphia and anomia, and disturbances in self-regulation of behavior were noted, in addition to recovery of an initially severe auditory comprehension deficit. A distinguishing feature of this case was the relative preservation of reading comprehension in all four assessments.     

Transfer of conditioned appetitive stimuli to conditioned aversive excitatory and inhibitory stimuli

The transfer of Pavlovian appetitive stimuli to Pavlovian aversive stimuli was examined in three experiments. In Experiment 1, rats received appetitive (Ap) conditioning designed to establish a flashing-light stimulus as either a CS+, CSo, or CS? for food, or to maintain it as a novel stimulus for US-alone subjects. Then, the stimulus was employed as a signal for weak shock in conditioned-emotional-response (CER) training. Both acquisition and extinction results showed that the ApCS+ facilitated and the ApCS? retarded aversive excitatory conditioning relative to the ApCSo and US-alone controls. Experiment 2 replicated the findings of Experiment 1 with both a moderate and a severe shock in CER training. In Experiment 3, different groups received the same appetitive conditioning as before, but to a flashing-light stimulus which was then employed as a signal for no shock in CER training. The ApCS? facilitated and the ApCS+ retarded aversive inhibitory conditioning relative to ApCSo and US-alone controls. Collectively, these findings establish that, in Pavlovian conditioning, transfer of an appetitive CS to an aversive excitor or inhibitor is facilitated by maintaining the initial conditioning contingency.     

Differences in spatial knowledge acquired from maps and navigation

Models of the spatial knowledge people acquire from maps and navigation and the procedures required for spatial judgments using this knowledge are proposed. From a map, people acquire survey knowledge encoding global spatial relations. This knowledge resides in memory in images that can be scanned and measured like a physical map. From navigation, people acquire procedural knowledge of the routes connecting diverse locations. People combine mental simulation of travel through the environment and informal algebra to compute spatial judgments. An experiment in which subjects learned an environment from navigation or from a map evaluates predictions of these models. With moderate exposure, map learning is superior for judgments of relative location and straight-line distances among objects. Learning from navigation is superior for orienting oneself with respect to unseen objects and estimating route distances. With extensive exposure, the performance superiority of maps over navigation vanishes. These and other results are consonant with the proposed mechanisms.     

Lunchroom noise control using feedback and group contingent reinforcement

Reduction of noise levels in an elementary school lunchroom was examined as a function of feedback and feedback plus reinforcement using group contingency procedures. Feedback consisted of signals from a traffic light, with green indicating acceptable levels, yellow indicating levels approaching undesirable, and red indicating unacceptable levels. Other behaviors, including running, hitting, pushing, and kicking, were measured incidentally. Results indicate that feedback plus reinforcement was effective in reducing noise levels. Feedback only was also effective, but to a lesser degree. No response-response relationship was found to exist between noise level and the other behaviors.